Desire, passion, lust—all emotions he was entirely willing to own to. Especially with her.
When, ready to leave, she glanced at him, he opened the door, waved her through, then strolled beside her down the corridor to the front hall. “Do you have a carriage waiting?”
“Yes.” She glanced at him. “I often use my parents’ second town carriage.”
He nodded and made a mental note to buy her her own carriage.
Reaching the front door, he went to open it but paused with his hand on the knob. He caught her eye. “One last point—the date of our wedding. Unless you specifically wish to delay it, I believe it will be in our best interests to tie the knot as soon as practicable.”
Returning his gaze, she didn’t pretend not to understand; for a twenty-two-year-old lady of quality, she was refreshingly short on guile.
Although faint color again rose in her cheeks, after an instant’s pause she nodded crisply. “Yes, I agree. That being the case, I believe we’ll be meeting at St. George’s a week after Henrietta and James.”
Looking down, she resettled her gloves.
Amused, he swung open the door and managed an abbreviated bow.
She slanted him a glance, then inclined her head. “Good day . . . my lord.”
He smiled back, making no attempt to conceal his appreciation. “Good day, my lady.”
Still smiling, he watched her walk down the steps to where her footman waited to open the door to a small black town carriage. He’d suppressed a very real impulse to ask which events she would be attending that evening. He was still too sore to attempt standing for long; he had to be content with remaining where he was and watching her drive away.
Two evenings later, having surrendered to her mother’s insistence that she attend Lady Percival’s ball, Mary accepted that she’d lost all patience with her current social role, given over as it was to adequately responding to the constant stream of congratulations and not-so-subtle queries the announcement in the Gazette had spawned.
She hadn’t expected being feted would prove such a chore.
Standing by the side of Lady Percival’s ballroom, alongside the chaise on which Louise sat chatting to several other matrons, close enough to intervene if necessary, Mary continued to smile and accept the proffered felicitations—some less than sincere—with passable grace, pointing out that she and Ryder had in fact been acquainted for more than a decade . . . she wished she’d stayed at home.
Which was shockingly unlike her. Being a bossy soul meant she needed people to steer and direct . . . indeed, she knew the people she wanted to steer and direct, but none were present, not even Stacie. More to the point, being the focus for so many others, she couldn’t march off and find something to amuse her; she had to stay in one place and provide amusement for everyone else.
She was debating how soon she could nudge her mother toward the door when the crowd to her left parted and Ryder appeared.
He was carrying his cane but otherwise appeared his usual, rakishly eye-catching self, perfectly groomed, his golden-brown hair gleaming, his linen and cravat precise and pristine, the latter arranged in an intricate fall, the ivory at throat and cuff in stark contrast to the midnight black of his elegantly cut evening coat and trousers, and his subdued black-and-gold checkered waistcoat.
Meeting her eyes, he smiled his lazy lion smile—no one observing it could doubt the sexual possessiveness with which he viewed her—and made straight for her.
The few still between them melted out of his way; the pair of matrons who had been about to approach her, their charges in tow, fell back in a tittering flutter.
She barely heard them. Something in her chest leapt; interest and more geysered. As if she’d been a desert, parched and dry, renewed engagement flowed like revivifying rain down her veins, yet . . .
As he neared, concern for him welled. She opened her mouth to upbraid him for having left the comfort and protection of his house, but before she could speak, he swooped. Even though he didn’t actually surround her, she felt as if he somehow had, as if she was enfolded within his protection; capturing her hand, he bowed—only she was close enough to register that the gesture lacked his customary fluidity—but as he straightened, both the expression in his eyes as they trapped hers and the tension inherent in all his movements carried a clear, if unvoiced, warning.
Eyes locking with hers, he carried her hand to his lips and brushed a lingering kiss over the backs of her fingers, and she battled to suppress a shiver.
Apparently oblivious—although she doubted he was—he murmured, in that sinfully deep voice he reserved for such moments, “My dear delight, I hoped I’d find you here. I fear I grew bored, and nothing would do but to seek your company.”
Ryder held Mary’s gaze, watched her blink, saw sudden awareness of where they were flare in her eyes, along with the understanding that quite half of her ladyship’s guests were now surreptitiously watching them and she couldn’t—shouldn’t—give him the piece of her mind currently hovering on the tip of her tongue. He’d elected to carry his cane, a necessary precaution, but as he wasn’t at the moment leaning on it, there was no reason for anyone to imagine he was recovering from any near-fatal wound rather than nursing a twisted ankle.
Then her awareness refocused on him and she smiled. “I’m delighted you did.” The quality of her smile assured him she was sincerely happy to see him.
Which led him to ask, sotto voce, “Has it been that bad?”
Her smile escalated by several degrees. “Worse,” she whispered as, beaming smile in place, she turned to the two matrons now even more eager to engage.
He dutifully stood beside her and played second fiddle to her lead; it was, after all, what he’d come there to do—to support her in whatever way he could. Hiding in the peace and quiet of his library while leaving her to face the social barrage alone hadn’t appealed on a number of counts; given his wound no longer troubled him unless he twisted and his strength had returned enough to risk the time on his feet, he’d sent a footman to inquire of her parents’ butler as to where she might be found, and had followed her there.
Despite his intentions, within ten minutes his lazy smile had grown somewhat forced. Slanting a glance at Mary, he seized a second between congratulatory exchanges to murmur, “How the devil can you swallow such syrup?”